Singa, a startup out of Helsinki, scores €1.75M seed turn to build a ‘Spotify of karaoke’

I have an hatred to karaoke after a rope we used to play in was wholly upstaged during a gig by a karaoke machine, but, as pastimes go, it stays a outrageous market. And where markets are big, startups like to go.

Enter Finland’s Singa, that is building a digital karaoke use that, in a possess words, wants to do for karaoke what Spotify has finished for music. The Helsinki-based association has recently scored €1.75 million in seed appropriation led by Initial Capital, with appearance from Tamares Holdings, Superhero Capital, Reaktor Ventures and Tekes.

“Over my 10 years in a karaoke attention using Karaoke World Championships, we worked with large and tiny karaoke companies all over a world, from Asia to a U.S., and gained discernment into a attention and saw that while many other party media were relocating towards streaming, karaoke was still stranded in a 90s,” Singa co-founder and CEO Atte Hujanen tells me.

“This was a outrageous harm to karaoke singers and represented a large event for a association that accepted both a attention and software-led disruption”.

To that end, Singa now comes in dual versions: For consumers, a Helsinki startup offers internal iOS, Android, Web, Apple TV SmartTV apps, that yield easy entrance to over 20,000 fully-licensed karaoke songs and what it describes as an immersive singing experience. For bars, restaurants, hotels and other party venues, Singa offers a pro-version, marketed as a modern, entirely digital, blurb turn-key karaoke resolution in a singular discerning package.

“With Singa we no longer need DVDs, CDGs, downloads, costly tradition hardware or any other kind of nonessential hassle,” adds Hujanen. “Singa creates it easy to sing anytime, anywhere and on any device, for both consumers and for any venue providing a stage”.

In terms of competitors, a Singa CEO records that YouTube is a world’s largest source for karaoke associated content, though says that 99 per cent of a calm is bootleg or un-licensed during best. Smule, a heavily-funded San Francisco-based startup, has also seen success in a mobile karaoke space, while Israel-based Yokee has grown a identical charity and usually recently sole to Canadian Stingray Digital for approximately $40 million. Chinese karaoke app Chang-Ba is a vital internal actor and now boasts around 30 million monthly active users.

“These players are not approach competitors, they are some-more focused on infrequent mobile-only experiences, audio/video filters and a complicated concentration on amicable network-like features,” he says.

Adds Hujanen: “The usually thing we caring about is providing a best singing experience. We don’t concentration on gimmicks, rather we arise adult each day meditative how a singing knowledge can be improved. For instance, we are a usually one’s who have truly digitized karaoke and gotten absolved of a cringeworthy clichés of “old school” karaoke videos and graphics. Our calm is rendered in realtime, that means it’s always optimized either you’re singing off your 70” 4k radio or a shade on your internet connected toaster”.